Last part of section 2

NOTE: the next sentence is "Dad said nothing. He was staring down at the cement patio, and when he turned to me, his eyes had a wounded look, like a dog who's been kicked. "You must be awfully ashamed of your old man," he said."

This is heartwarming. I was so happy for everyone in the Walls family. The feeling Jeanette must have had must have been so elated. I noticed something in this chapter that I think shows something very large. Jeanette capitalizes dad..(it appears as Dad). This shows how much she respects and idolizes him. Almost as quickly as he stopped drinking, he began again. At this point, I was literally crying. How could a father be so ignorant? His family has helped him, and he is helped himself. (You need to read the book to read about his drunk fits. He wasn't a happy drunk.)  The worst part, for me, was when he went back to achohol Rex set the christmas tree and all of the presents on fire. I literally felt so devestated...the first (or one of the first) christmases that these kids actually (would have) gotten real gifts. To be honest, I cried like it was my presents that burned. I just couldn't imagine being in that situation. These kids are some of the [emotionally] strongest people I have ever 'known'.

Part 4

Quite a few things happened in this section, BUT I am just going to talk about one thing.
.........Billy Deal

"Bertha Whitefoot [neighbor] took to calling Billy. "the devil with a crew cut" and. "the terror of the Tracks." She claimed he set fire to a couple of her dogs and skinned some neighborhood cats and strung their naked pink bodies up on a clothesline to make jerky. Billy said Bertha was a big fat liar. I didn't know whom to believe. After all, Billy was a certified JD—juvenile delinquent. He had told us that he spent time in a detention center in Reno for shoplifting and vandalizing cars. Shortly after he moved to the Tracks, Billy started following me around. He was always looking at me and telling the other kids he was my boyfriend." From this quote, we can see that he really was a total rebel. His history is extremely important to how he interacts with others. So, Billy really does follow Jeannette all around AND he tells everyone that she is his girlfriend. He gives her a ring, that he probably stole from his mother, and thinks that they are a couple. From the start, Jeanette knows that it is a bad idea. Alternatively, Rose (mom) says that she should be nice to him and be his friend. One day when the neighborhood friends are playing hid and seek, it all goes \DOWNHILL\. (QUICKLY!) So, Jeanette is hiding by a shed, and all of a sudden Billy pulls her into the shed. He arranges himself around her, and starts asking her questions and kind of hinting at what he is going to do to her. At this moment, I had such deep sorrow for Jeanette. She had NO idea what was going on. At 8 years old, Jeanette was being raped, as Billy so kindly informed her, and she couldn't tell anyone.  8 years old...!! Seriously. She didn't even know what rape was, and looking in the dictionary just made it more confusing. By this point, Jeanette wouldn't let anyone tell her that giving the ring back was a bad idea. After she gave Billy back the ring, she went home. Later, Billy came to her house (her parents weren't home, so it was just her and her 3 siblings) with a gun. Can I just say, this kid shouldn't be running around!? He started threatening Jeanette, and started shooting the windows and trying to shoot the kids. Could you imagine a boy claiming to be your boyfriend, rape you, and then try to shoot you and your family? This is a  horrific experience. I still can't believe the horror these children have gone through, ALL BEFORE AGE 10. Lori went upstairs and got her father's gun and shot Billy. This was to much action and before anything could happen Rex packed the family up and decided to move to Phoenix.

I will blog later about the adventures of Phoenix.

Part 3 (Part 2 of Part 2)

So this section was a lot less....borderline abusive.
My goal is to make this part slightly less ... lengthy ...

Main things that happened in this section:

• For Christmas, Rex gifts all 3 of his kids stars. 
• Rose gives birth to a baby girl.
• Jeanette got into a fight. 
• Some girls convinced Jeanette to follow her and then they beat her. The next day, Jeanette followed them to the alley. When they were about to beat her up again/she was about to beat them up. Brian, her little brother, came out with a stick and started threatening them. 
• "The next day when I got to the alley, the Mexican girls were waiting for me. Before they could attack, Brian jumped out from behind a clump of sagebrush, waving a yucca branch. Brian was shorter than me and just as skinny, with freckles across his nose and sandy red hair that fell into his eyes. He wore my hand­me­down pants, which I had inherited from Lori and then passed on to him, and they were always sliding off his bony behind. "Just back off now, and everyone can walk away with all their limbs still attached," Brian said. It was another one of Dad's lines. The Mexican girls stared at him before bursting into laughter. Then they surrounded him. Brian did fairly well fending them off until the yucca branch broke. Then he disappeared beneath a flurry of swinging fists and kicking feet."
• This is the cutest thing, and it really shows how reliant the siblings are on each other. 
• (not really a main thing that happened) Police tried to pull over Rex, but instead he 'zoomed off'. 
•  a squad car tried to pull us over because the brake lights on the Green Caboose weren't working. Dad took off. He said that if the cops stopped us, they'd find out that we had no registration or insurance and that the license plate had been taken off another car, and they'd arrest us all. 
• This shows how irresponsible these parents are. By running away from the cops, what example is this setting for the kids. It's almost as they are encouraging it. "Hey Kids, when cops chase you ALWAYS outrun them." BUT at the same time, I feel that he is protecting his family, and I find that very paternal of him. While he isn't doing the right thing, once again I am making excuses for characters he is at least doing it for his family, not just for himself. 
• The kids actually enrolled in school. They made friends. They were happy.
• Not that these kids were unhappy before, but now they have other kids to play with. They have a learning environment. I personally was so happy as they got new friends and started school. I think that it is very important for them to do something other than stay with others. Since they are young they need to develop social skills. 
• Jeanette and Brian set their 'lab' on fire.
• "Toxic and hazardous wastes were stored in another corner of the dump, where you could find old batteries, oil drums, paint cans, and bottles with skulls and crossbones. Brian and I decided some of this stuff would make for a neat scientific experiment, so we filled up a couple of boxes with different bottles and jars and took them to an abandoned shed we named our laboratory. At first we mixed things together, hoping they would explode, but nothing happened, so I decided we should conduct an experiment to see if any of the stuff was flammable. The next day after school we came back to the laboratory with a box of Dad's matches. We unscrewed the lids of some of the jars, and I dropped in matches, but still nothing happened. So we mixed up a batch of what Brian called nuclear fuel, pouring different liquids into a can. When I tossed in the match, a cone of flame shot up with a whoosh like a jet afterburner. "
• There is a fine line between dangerous and freedom. Rose and Rex believe that they kids shouldn't have rules (other than no back sassing), but some of the stuff that they do borderlines on really dangerous. These kids were playing with TOXIC wastes. TOXIC!! "No worries let's just let our kids play with toxic wastes and fire...great combination, Don't you think so, Honey?" This does show that these kids are independent and creative. They don't need anything storebought to have fun, which is a great character trait. Then again, I feel that maybe at this point these children would understand the fine line between fun and dangerous. Maybe the parents should enforce safe boundaries. Not really boundaries, just lessons about what is safe. 

Pt. 2 (well part 1 of part 2...make sense??)

Main things that happened in this section

• Jeanette catches on fire (age 3) while cooking hot dogs without supervision. Taken to hospital, and treated. Family smuggles her out of the hospital.
• Rex, her father, decides to take the whole family and leave their home (because the FBI and tax collectors are after him. In this section, I think that they moved to 4 different places
• middle of the desert
• Las Vegas
• San Francisco 
• Midland --another place in the middle of the desert
• Through each place, we learned more about the characters and their lifestyle. 

Okay, so lets start with Jeanette catching on fire. She was 3 years old and cooking hot dogs on the stove, with NO supervision. Her mom was in the other room, painting. She catches on fire and is then rushed to the hospital. She is covered in 3rd-degree burns and has to have skin grafts. 

"The nurses and doctors kept asking me questions: How did you get burned? Have your parents ever hurt

you? Why do you have all these bruises and cuts? My parents never hurt me, I said. I got the cuts and

bruises playing outside and the burns from cooking hot dogs. They asked what I was doing cooking hot

dogs by myself at the age of three. It was easy, I said. You just put the hot dogs in the water and boil

them. It wasn't like there was some complicated recipe that you had to be old enough to follow. The pan

was too heavy for me to lift when it was full of water, so I'd put a chair next to the sink, climb up and

fill a glass, then stand on a chair by the stove and pour the water into the pan. I did that over and over

again until the pan held enough water. Then I'd turn on the stove, and when the water was boiling, I'd

drop in the hot dogs. "Mom says I'm mature for my age," I told them. "and she lets me cook for myself a lot."

 After a few days, her dad decides that the hospital is filled with white trash and that they don't know what they are doing, so he smuggles her out. After you catch on fire, what do you think your views on Fire are? Well, Jeanette wasn't afraid of it, she was now intrigued; she would steal her father's matches and play with them in the back yard. 

One thing that can be said about this chapter is that Jeanette is fearless. I mean really who could have their whole abdomen burned, have skin grafts and still want to play with fire. I just can't believe having no fear after her accident. I also have to say how responsible Jeanette is. She cooks for herself!! She is 3 years old...3! We can also see that her mom is a tiny bit self-absorbed...I mean no time to cook, but plenty of time for painting. (She paints for fun, not for profit, as far as I know.) Somehow though I honestly don't see her mother as a bad person. (or her dad) I'm on of those readers who make excuses for characters because I love them. In this case, I don't love Rose, the kids moms, or Rex, the dad, but I love Jeanette and her siblings. I want these kids to have a good life, so I just keep making excuses for the lack of mature and parental material in Rose and Rex.

Now, Rex says that the FBI (or tax collectors as the mom explains to the kids)  are after him so they have to move. Well, as he explains they can't be in places for too long otherwise the 'FBI' will find him. He even smokes his cigarettes backward...in case the 'FBI' is following him. During this section, (30 pages) the family has moved 4 times. They first go into the desert and sleep in the sand, then they went to Las Vegas so Rex could get money. On their way to Las Vegas, Jeanette falls out of the car. (the door flies open when they made a sharp turn. The parents don't turnaround until a while after. Part of this event could be because Rex was sippin' beer while he was driving, but I don't know for sure. While they were in Las Vegas gambling the kids would just play hid and seek in the casinos. After the mafia found out about them, guessing they were cheating, fellow gamblers suggested they leave. Mom decided that they should go live on the pacific ocean. So they drove their car out to the beach and just slept in their car. Then the police told them that they couldn't stay on the beach, and for the final move (in this section), they moved to midland. Rex got a job, and the kids got cats. 

Through these events, we can see that Rex and his wife are very adventurous. Well, that can also be a bad thing. I mean these kids don't have anything steady in their lives, they only sometimes attend school. They are in a car whose doors just randomly open, and on occasion kids fall out. These parents while Jeanette loves them and doesn't know any different, aren't responsible or mature enough to be parents.

Repetidly while reading this book, I have to remind myself that this is true. Let's just imagine this: you are reading a FICTION book, and a character just falls out of the car while making a sharp turn. Funny, right? Well, when I was reading this, I was like THIS GIRL IS ALIVE. SHE LITERALLY FELL OUT OF A CAR WHILE HER DAD WAS DRIVING. HER FAMILY DIDN'T NOTICE THAT SHE WAS MISSING FOR A FEW MILES. Like its so completely different to realize that this actually happened. 

Wow! That was really long...and just so you know I really haven't included any details. So you will have to read the book for those. 

BYE!! :)

Part One

Ok, so I read part one of The Glass Castle, and it was super inviting and suspenseful. :)

--but first--HI, and welcome to my first book related post--
3 things.

1. This book is a memoir--Jeanette Walls is the narrator and author.
2. This post includes a summary and my opinion.
3. I'm already sucked into this book. :P

So the first part was set in present day, and it was basically saying about who the narrator felt about her family. (Her mom and her dad are...from what I get...homeless.) Jeannette is pretty well set, money wise, lives in a nice apartment, has a nice husband, has a home filled with Persian rugs and antiques. This first chapter just illustrates Jeanette's adult self interacting with her mom.


At first I thought, Oh my gawd how selfish of her. How could she have everything she wants and just let her parents sit on the streets going through garbage. Then as the chapter went on, Jeanette described lunch with her mother. I had completely different feelings after that. The parents didn't want any help from her. I respected both parties now. During this chapter, she describes a converstation she had with her mother. I found it really bitter-sweet. Its attached below. Let me know if you find it as bittersweet/hearbreaking&heartwarming as me.

""I'm worried about you," I said. "Tell me what I can do to help."
Her smile faded. "What makes you think I need your help?"
"I'm not rich," I said. "But I have some money. Tell me what it is you need."
She thought for a moment. "I could use an electrolysis treatment."
"Be serious."
"I am serious. If a woman looks good, she feels good."
"Come on, Mom." I felt my shoulders tightening up, the way they invariably did during these
conversations. "I'm talking about something that could help you change your life, make it better."
"You want to help me change my life?" Mom asked. "I'm fine. You're the one who needs help. Your
values are all confused."
"Mom, I saw you picking through trash in the East Village a few days ago."
"Well, people in this country are too wasteful. It's my way of recycling." She took a bite of her Seafood
Delight. "Why didn't you say hello?"
"I was too ashamed, Mom. I hid."
Mom pointed her chopsticks at me. "You see?" she said. "Right there. That's exactly what I'm saying.
You're way too easily embarrassed. Your father and I are who we are. Accept it."
"And what am I supposed to tell people about my parents?"
"Just tell the truth," Mom said. "That's simple enough.""

I love Jeanette as a person already and I feel sorry for her. I feel sorrow about her attitude towards her family. BUT this doesn't make me like her any less...you know why? SHE WAS HONEST. She literally told her mom, "I was ashamed, Mom. I hid." That just makes me have faith in her as a person and what the future holds for her. <3

Keep reading,
Emi

Welcome!

Hello! So this is my first blog post on this blog! Currently, I am about to start The Glass Castle for a "your choice" blogging assignment.

#blogging
#theglasscastle
#school
#firstpost